About half a billion euros more for health care is planned in the 2027 budget, not this year as first reported. The cabinet made the correction. Prime minister Rumen Radev announced even tougher checks on doctors and closer control of the TELK, the panels that decide degrees of disability.

Radev spoke at the opening of the forum "The Doctors We Trust". Health minister Katya Ivkova also took part.

How it began: Radev: nearly half a billion euros more for health care and tougher control of TELK

The money is for the health insurance fund, the national children's hospital and the pay of young doctors. The government will also use it to improve their conditions for professional development. The cabinet wants doctors to work in good, modern conditions, and Bulgaria to use the latest treatments, as other countries do.

The state needs the knowledge, talent and energy of young doctors, the prime minister said. In his words, it has a duty to give them the chance to work and develop in Bulgaria, and it will meet that duty.

Radev believes doctors have a mission to protect public trust. "In a society where trust keeps eroding, doctors are an extremely important pillar of trust," he said. He hopes the authorities will not detain Bulgarian doctors.

"I can't promise you that we will turn a blind eye. The checks will become even broader," he said.

The tighter control also covers the TELK, the panels that set the degree of disability. Radev said the number of their rulings is growing in geometric progression, and 880,000 people now have one. The first report said more than 800,000. The prime minister said he is not claiming that people with these rulings have no real diagnosis. The state will invest in digitalisation so there is no room for abuse.

Radev believes health care must keep moving closer to leading standards, and that prevention should increasingly take the place of hospital treatment.

No national goal can be reached without health, the prime minister also said. In his view, health is decisive for society's development, and full work needs a healthy person, with the widest possible range of mental and physical health.

At the forum, Radev presented awards to obstetrician-gynaecologists Prof. Dimitar Markov and Dr Maria Yunakova, to Prof. Ivan Kostov, director of the Maichin Dom specialised hospital for active treatment in obstetrics and gynaecology, and to Prof. Asen Nikolov.